Interconnectedness

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In a continued effort to re-establish my online identity as Q, I recently created a new LinkedIn account, and ask myself this question before adding anyone:

“Who are my professional influences and/or who in the professional world seems to be heading in a direction technically and/or professionally who can serve as ‘vision’ examples for what I want and/or where I am trying to take my own life?”

I had leveraged social networks as just a way to maintain my ‘social connections’.

But what I have been finding is Facebook had led to a really insidious form of censorship and manipulation of my own speech, likes, dislikes and whatnot, and Linkedin was and always had been less a tool for me than it was for headhunters and those I barely knew who were seeking to expand their credibility and nothing more.

So as I begin doing things online, I have been actively asking “What’s In It For Me?”

WIIFM, pronounced WIFF-EM.

On Facebook, I removed all my ‘friends’ a while ago.

Not in small part because they had been dropping me in droves.

I was tempted to close my account at first, but with all my photos and timeline information up there, I figured I would leverage Facebook as a database for a while until I figured out a more productive use for it for me.

So about two months ago, I figured I can use Facebook for maintaining contact with family, of which I would add any family members who requested, and for friends I have an actual friendship (or more) with in real life. My personal rule for Facebook now is, I won’t add you if I couldn’t consider you a friend (or more), and if I haven’t at the very least shook your hand in real life, then I won’t connect with you.

With these personal rules for Facebook, my friendslist is now very short – 29 people.

This is compared to the 310+ I had before I had my breakdown,

And with Facebook, the moment I see anyone feeding political drama or things I just don’t want to hear, I’ll hide their feed. No offense, I’ll call ya a friend but if you’re gonna talk politics or religion all day, then I’m gonna shut you the fuck down just like I would in real life until you can carry a conversation about something else.

This has worked out well so far for managing Facebook.

Linkedin has been a different beast for me altogether.

Since I am what you can say transitioning careers, and not fully sure what that means career wise since this world has yet to present a career direction that’s amenable to my new passions and desires, I figure I will regard Linkedin like a dartboard and add people who might help me aim my own mind and life in the direction I want to take it in.

With this, I am choosing to add people who have produced products and/or services and/or an image which have influenced me in inspirational ways, OR people who seem more aligned with a direction I want to take my own life.

No, I’m not really concerned about who and what they are in real life, whether they’re an asshole or not.

Obvious people who would fall in this list would be Bill Gates, Mark Rein (the creator of Unreal), Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams, most of which do not have linked in profiles.

But my list of personal influencers is extensive, and while I only have 6 people added on my network right now, I suspect that as my network grows, so will those who accept a request to join my network by a man named “Q”.

So just today. I noticed something really, really interesting and bizarre.

I’d met a woman by the name of Jennifer just the other day. We merely shook hands.

And about two months ago I met a lawyer by the name of Steve.

I’d been wondering how Linkedin got a list of people I might know before.

But these people who I merely became acquaintances with in real life. Who I didn’t exchange personal information in any way. Who don’t have emails linked to anyone I know. And I merely knew by shaking their hands.

They both appeared as ‘people I might know’.

So now I know who Steve works for and what he does there, and the same thing about Jennifer.

All I can say is thank you, mind, for providing the real life links to the people around me.

This is pretty cool.

I should have suspected this was happening before when I saw friend porn of Jocelyn.

I should have suspected something like this was happening before when, under the influence of bath salts, I saw mountains of porn getting added to xhamster.com and xvideo.com on a real time basis on a particularly horny evening.